Smart Array Controller Technology: Drive Array Expansion and Extension abstract This paper describes four specific functions of the Smart Array Controller family: capacity expansion; volume extension; RAID level migration; and stripe size migration. Capacity Expansion adds physical drives to an array. This is usually done in anticipation of additional changes to the storage configuration, such as volume extension.
Smart Array Controller Technology: Drive Array Expansion and Extension capacity Capacity expansion is the process of adding physical drives to an array that has already been configured. The logical drives (or volumes) that exist in the expansion array before the expansion takes place are unchanged. Only the amount of free space in the array changes.
Smart Array Controller Technology: Drive Array Expansion and Extension logical drive Once the drive capacity has been expanded, the added capacity can be used to create a new logical drive (figure 2) or to extend the size of an existing creation logical drive (as described in the section titled volume extension).
Smart Array Controller Technology: Drive Array Expansion and Extension volume Volume extension grows the storage space of a logical drive (see figure 3). During this process, an administrator adds new storage space to an existing extension logical drive on the same array, usually after the array has been expanded. An administrator may have gained this new storage space by either capacity expansion, as previously discussed, or by deleting another logical drive on the same array.
Smart Array Controller Technology: Drive Array Expansion and Extension volume extension Operating systems within the Windows family support online drive extension under specific conditions. To understand these conditions, an administrator in Windows must first recognize the differences between Windows basic and dynamic disks.
Smart Array Controller Technology: Drive Array Expansion and Extension RAID migration Administrators may perform volume extension in order to increase raw data storage capacity, to improve performance by increasing the number of spindles in a logical drive volume , or to change fault-tolerance (RAID) configurations.
Smart Array Controller Technology: Drive Array Expansion and Extension stripe size When an administrator expands the volume capacity of an array, this does nothing to change the stripe size of the data stored within the array. Each migration RAID level has a default value designed to provide good performance across many types of applications (see table 2).
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